'How to be green? Many people have asked us this important question. It's really very simple and requires no expert knowledge or complex skills. Here's the answer. Consume less. Share more. Enjoy life.' Penny Kemp and Derek Wall

15 Oct 2007

Re-elected as Principal Speaker

Announcement:

Results of GPEx election postal ballot count 15th October 2007

The four remaining GPEx positions were elected by postal ballot. The candidates elected are as follows;

Female Principal speaker: Caroline Lucas

Male Principal speaker: Derek Wall

Local party coordinator: Jon Lucas

Chair: Richard Mallinder

The turn out for the election was just over 20%

The votes in detail

Female Principal speaker

Caroline Lucas 1190 votes ELECTED

Jenny Jones 335 votes

RON 6 votes

Spoiled 7 votes

Male Principal speaker

Ashley Gunstock 138 votes >>> Ashley's votes were then redistributed

Derek Wall 752 votes >>> + 60 = 812 votes ELECTED

Darren Johnson 625 votes >>> + 53 = 678 votes

RON 16 votes >>> + 5 = 21 votes

Spoiled 1 spoilt paper

Local party coordinator

Jon Lucas 748 votes ELECTED

Chris Haine 692 votes

RON 24 votes

Spoiled 5 votes

Chair

Richard Mallinder 781 votes ELECTED

Peter Cranie / David Ford 683 votes

RON 21 votes

Spoiled 5 votes

Yours,

Jim Jepps Cambridge Green Party and ERO

ps please now consider these reults announced so feel free to discuss and distribute them as you see fit.

'I am both honoured and humbled to have been re-elected as Green Party Principal Speaker with such a decisive and increased vote. I am going to have another year of standing up for radical green politics, ecology, social justice, grassroots democracy and peace. My job is to trumpet the Green Party Manifesto for a Sustainable Society and I will do so with renewed energy and vigour. Green politics more than ever is vital, it's the politics quite literally of survival, we live in a world where another way of living is necessary and green politics is about making it real. Just look at the climbing temperatures and the spread of global warfare, the US drive towards global imperialism supported by Brown as usual, we Greens must renew our anti-war activism, Iraq must not be followed by the destruction of Iran.

I am also pleased to have been re-elected (last week) as a coordinator of the Ecosocialist International Network, I believe in ecosocialism without apology, this network will bring activists together from Green Parties, the wider left and from grassroots social movements, globally. I have also been reselected as Green Party prospective parliamentary candidate for Windsor constituency.

Across the globe but especially in Latin America people are struggling for a green vision, environmental protection is about making sure forests, rivers and other habitats sustain strong local economies. A world based on ever increasing capitalist economic growth wrecks the very conditions neeeded for real prosperity.

There are so many things to campaign on and provide support but obviously green politics includes a respect for other species and I am a supporter of animal liberation. The threatened dismembering of the Post Office is another current issue and I hope to sustain green party support for the CWU, along with action for a trade union freedom bill.

The high points of this year have included visiting the wonderful climate camp, my trips to local green parties where activists and councillors are getting things done in places like Stroud, meetings with progressive green Muslims like the amazing London Islamic Network for the Environment and of course being shouted at on programmes like HardTalk.

Politics is always tough I have had great support from lots of people but number one is my partner Sarah Farrow. It would have also been difficult if not impossible without the inspiration of people like Nicholas Hildyard and Larry Lohmann from the corner house, possible the most sophisticated think tank on the planet and of course where necessary I criticise leaders but I am also inspired by them, Viva Morales, his astonishing speech at the UN is one of the most important green political documents since the work of William Morris.

I offer my heart felt congratulations to other elected members of Green Party Executive, together we have a big task to complete.

I am going to do my best with them to build a bigger, better, feister Green Party of England and Wales....please join us to change the world, so we have one.

Finally, finally I would like to say a big thank you to Joel Kovel, very much my mentor, who inspired me to stand as Principal Speaker in the first place.'

Here is Morales speech:

Evo Morales to U.N.: “Let Us Respect Our Mother Earth" Letter from Bolivian President Evo Morales to the members of the United Nations on the issue of the environment.

Sister and brother Presidents and Heads of States of the United Nations:

The world is suffering from a fever due to climate change, and the disease is the capitalist development model. Whilst over 10,000 years the variation in carbon dioxide (CO2) levels on the planet was approximately 10%, during the last 200 years of industrial development, carbon emissions have increased by 30%. Since 1860, Europe and North America have contributed 70% of the emissions of CO2. 2005 was the hottest year in the last one thousand years on this planet.

Different investigations have demonstrated that out of the 40,170 living species that have been studied, 16,119 are in danger of extinction. One out of eight birds could disappear forever. One out of four mammals is under threat. One out of every three reptiles could cease to exist. Eight out of ten crustaceans and three out of four insects are at risk of extinction. We are living through the sixth crisis of the extinction of living species in the history of the planet and, on this occasion, the rate of extinction is 100 times more accelerated than in geological times.

Faced with this bleak future, transnational interests are proposing to continue as before, and paint the machine green, which is to say, continue with growth and irrational consumerism and inequality, generating more and more profits, without realising that we are currently consuming in one year what the planet produces in one year and three months. Faced with this reality, the solution can not be an environmental make over.

I read in the World Bank report that in order to mitigate the impacts of climate change we need to end subsidies on hydrocarbons, put a price on water and promote private investment in the clean energy sector. Once again they want to apply market recipes and privatisation in order to carry out business as usual, and with it, the same illnesses that these policies produce. The same occurs in the case of biofuels, given that to produce one litre of ethanol you require 12 litres of water. In the same way, to process one ton of agrifuels you need, on average, one hectare of land.

Faced with this situation, we – the indigenous peoples and humble and honest inhabitants of this planet – believe that the time has come to put a stop to this, in order to rediscover our roots, with respect for Mother Earth; with the Pachamama as we call it in the Andes. Today, the indigenous peoples of Latin America and the world have been called upon by history to convert ourselves into the vanguard of the struggle to defend nature and life.

I am convinced that the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, recently approved after so many years of struggle, needs to pass from paper to reality so that our knowledge and our participation can help to construct a new future of hope for all. Who else but the indigenous people, can point out the path for humanity in order to preserve nature, natural resources and the territories that we have inhabited from ancient times.

We need a profound change of direction, at the world wide level, so as to stop being the condemned of the earth. The countries of the north need to reduce their carbon emissions by between 60% and 80% if we want to avoid a temperature rise of more than 2º in what is left of this century, which would provoke global warming of catastrophic proportions for life and nature.

We need to create a World Environment Organisation which is binding, and which can discipline the World Trade Organisation, which is propelling us towards barbarism. We can no longer continue to talk of growth in Gross National Product without taking into consideration the destruction and wastage of natural resources. We need to adopt an indicator that allows us to consider, in a combined way, the Human Development Index and the Ecological Footprint in order to measure our environmental situation.

We need to apply harsh taxes on the super concentration of wealth, and adopt effective mechanisms for its equitable redistribution. It is not possible that three families can have an income superior to the combined GDP of the 48 poorest countries. We can not talk of equity and social justice whilst this situation continues.

The United States and Europe consume, on average, 8.4 times more that the world average. It is necessary for them to reduce their level of consumption and recognise that all of us are guests on this same land; of the same Pachamama.

I know that change is not easy when an extremely powerful sector has to renounce their extraordinary profits for the planet to survive. In my own country I suffer, with my head held high, this permanent sabotage because we are ending privileges so that everyone can “Live Well” and not better than our counterparts. I know that change in the world is much more difficult than in my country, but I have absolute confidence in human beings, in their capacity to reason, to learn from mistakes, to recuperate their roots, and to change in order to forge a just, diverse, inclusive, equilibrated world in harmony with nature.

Evo Morales AymaPresident of the Republic of BoliviaSeptember 24, 2007

5 comments:

I'd like to add that they're getting things done in places like Kirklees, Norwich, Brighton & Hove, Lancaster, and what probably prompted me to respond...my own London Borough of Lewisham.

Derek will know (since he was good enough to help me get elected in 2006) that these electoral successes were on the back of serious campaigning and engagement with the local people - giving us a significant mandate in Lewisham and these other places.

With regard to your ambition to build a 'bigger, better, fiestier' Green Party - it would be good if you could let us know how what you intend to do about the following:

* more members - recruitment & retention of new/existing members

* more Green councillors on more local authorities - support for local elections & 'Target to Win' as a means of engaging with thousands of people in England & Wales on the urgent 'Green message'

* more members on the London Assembly - with 15% of the vote share in London Noel Lynch & Sian Berry could join Jenny Jones & Darren Johnson

* more money - increased resources for the Party mean better campaigns and national press office

Really disappointing though with the 20 percent turnout. What does this say for the engagement of even our members, never mind the unconverted? Something is wrong - probably a few things. We have to become a mass party and not just a minority interest seen as a bit wierd!

I couldn't agree with aremach more...we need to boost membership and engagement, which is why I wanted to get an assurance from Derek as newly elected Principal Speaker that this was his aim too.

In a recent post Derek has expressed contempt for genuine (some might say gimmicky) attempts to recruit & retain membership with the offer a string bag. It's been successful. However this initiative appears to have provoked an over-reaction - after all it's only a string bag! So what I really want to get to is the genuine issue and I think it is about some subjective question of'quality' of membership. My concern is that Derek's preferred aim is to have an elite party whose members are drawn from a very narrow segment of society - those with political views close to Derek's AND keen to be activists - and I evidence this by his attempt to describe those who attempt to grow the membership generally as 'New Greens' - a term clearly chosen as an attempt to be politically offensive. At the same time I am concerned that Derek is prepared to reject the so-called 'armchair' members whose support gives us a genuine mandate to participate in public debate, funds for the Party's campaigns, help at election times and other key moments and give credibility to internal democracy.

It will interesting to see how an increase in membership will affect the Party - once we reach 10,000 Conference flips back to being delegate-based. This may well change the current Conference from the self-selected elite that it currently is to one where delegates have to dicuss the Conference agenda with the local party and may on occasions operate a sensible local party mandate.